How To Understand Mach-O Symbol Table

Question

I am currently learning how to disassemble Mach-O Binary Files and I am trying to figure out how to understand a 'Symbol Table' (in load cmd LC_SYMTAB).

How Do I Read / Interpret A Symbol Table and its entries? I am not 100% of this but it appears that the entries are 8 bytes each? (correct me if I'm wrong)

I know that a string table is a group of strings separated by null bytes but what is a Symbol Table and its purpose?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Straight from <mach-o/nlist.h>:

struct nlist {
    union {
        uint32_t n_strx;    /* index into the string table */
    } n_un;
    uint8_t n_type;         /* type flag, see below */
    uint8_t n_sect;         /* section number or NO_SECT */
    int16_t n_desc;         /* see <mach-o/stab.h> */
    uint32_t n_value;       /* value of this symbol (or stab offset) */
};

struct nlist_64 {
    union {
        uint32_t  n_strx;   /* index into the string table */
    } n_un;
    uint8_t n_type;         /* type flag, see below */
    uint8_t n_sect;         /* section number or NO_SECT */
    uint16_t n_desc;        /* see <mach-o/stab.h> */
    uint64_t n_value;       /* value of this symbol (or stab offset) */
};

So no, that shouldn't be 8 bytes, but rather 12 bytes for 32-bit and 16 bytes for 64-bit binaries.